The National Register of Health Service Psychologists is committed to raising at least $250,000 to create a fund with APF that will increase the number of internships available through accredited programs.
"There is a tremendous bottleneck that the American Psychological Foundation and other entities have attempted to resolve," says Morgan Sammons, PhD, ABPP, executive officer of the National Register of Health Service Psychologists. "By directly funding the internship sites that have the ability to increase the number of slots for graduate students, we hope to move the profession beyond this bottleneck and train the psychologists we need to provide a range of mental health services."
The National Register, founded in 1974, is the largest credentialing organization for psychologists. It currently credentials more than 10,000 psychologists and banks the training experience of more than 2,500 doctoral students.
The National Register Internship Partnership Fund started with a gift of $100,000 from the National Register, and Sammons has also pledged $30,000 to the fund. The organization has an initial fundraising goal of $250,000, but Sammons hopes eventually to raise $500,000 to fund even more new internship slots and to begin accepting applications from accredited internship programs in 2017.
The National Register is particularly interested in funding sites that have training objectives consistent with the organization's values of working with underserved populations and training psychologists to work in integrated health-care environments.
While there are internships available in nonaccredited programs, Sammons says the National Register's board of directors felt it was critical to partner with accredited programs for this fund.
"Our organization will take applicants that do not come from accredited programs, but they have difficulty meeting our requirements and getting licensed, and most large employers require employees to have gone through an accredited internship program," he explains.
The National Register decided to partner with APF for the initiative because the foundation has a long history of giving on behalf of the profession. "We felt it would be the most effective way of soliciting contributions while also distributing the monies to organizations with the highest standards," Sammons says.
The need to solve the psychology internship crisis is greater than ever as the Affordable Care Act increases the number of people who qualify for mental health services — and often those people are children, adolescents and underserved populations, Sammons says.
"We are extremely pleased with the initial response and hope people will donate to the fund," Sammons says. "We feel that it has the potential to help remove one of the major stumbling blocks affecting the profession, and as the demand for psychological services continues to grow, it is clear we are going to face a shortage of appropriately trained professionals."
Readers interested in contributing to the fund can contact Andrew Boucher at (202) 783-7663.
